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Entrepreneurship Education and the Promotion of Startup Development: The Case of Pilar, Paraguay

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Public Policy Research in the Global South

Abstract

Ajzen’s (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50(2), 179–211, 1991) Theory of Planned Behavior has been extensively used in order to assess the effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Education Programs (EEPs) in promoting startup development by increasing EEP participants’ entrepreneurial intentions and attitudes (personal attitude toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) toward entrepreneurship. However, studies that provide evidence from developing countries, where small businesses are the main economic units, and that test particular types of EEPs, focused on those economic units, remain limited. Therefore, this chapter aims at understanding whether EEP participants’ entrepreneurial intentions and attitudes toward startup development increase significantly after having completed an Education through Entrepreneurship type of EEP, by carrying out a single-group experiment—a 3-day-long intensive workshop named “Entrepreneurship Education and Creation of Small Businesses” in Pilar, Paraguay—adopting a pretest and posttest research design and conducting a paired t-test for means. This study belongs to the group of studies that have found statistically significant increases in EEP participants’ entrepreneurial intentions and perceived behavioral control and a positive, yet not statistically significant, effect on EEP participants’ personal attitude toward the behavior and subjective norms. These findings have several implications for EEP designers and administrators, as they recommend the implementation of the studied type of EEP.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be clarified that the promotion of startup development refers to the increase of students’ entrepreneurial intentions and attitudes toward the development of startups. Likewise, the terms “startups,” “small business,” and “small firms” are implicitly used interchangeably by the study’s author, unless otherwise stated.

  2. 2.

    This paper is based on the thesis titled “Entrepreneurship Education and the Promotion of Small Business Development: The Case of Pilar, Paraguay,” which was submitted by the author for the degree of Master of Public Policy at the University of Erfurt, Germany, on 7 July 2017.

  3. 3.

    In a population of around 40,000 inhabitants in Pilar, Paraguay, according to official data, there are only 5614 “registered workers.” As such, “registered workers” may only refer to those who are officially employed and included in the Paraguayan social security system and exclude those employed in the informal sector.

  4. 4.

    The results of participants’ basic demographic and background information are available upon request.

  5. 5.

    Contradictory results within a construct were also reported in the study made by Fayolle et al. (2006) and Krueger and Carsrud (1993).

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  1. President’s Delivery Unit of the Republic of Paraguay, Asunción, Paraguay

    Fernando Luis Ramirez Gonzalez

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  1. Fernando Luis Ramirez Gonzalez
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  1. Willy Brandt School of Public Policy, University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany

    Heike M. Grimm

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Ramirez Gonzalez, F.L. (2019). Entrepreneurship Education and the Promotion of Startup Development: The Case of Pilar, Paraguay. In: Grimm, H.M. (eds) Public Policy Research in the Global South. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06061-9_14

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